Trump-aligned congresspeople aren’t spreading wildfire disinformation in a vacuum; American social media giants are enabling a haze of conspiracy theories and misinformation about the wildfires ravaging Canadian forests, and are disguising the fossil fuel industry’s role in the crisis, researchers have found.
Link above is to CAAD’s (Climate Action Against Disinformation) - Briefing: Canadian Wildfire Disinformation June 2025
Why not? If we spend 200 million a year on clearing but save a billion in insurance claims plus the trauma of relocating people during fires and having them lose all their possessions, it seems like a smart move. ps. We spent 12 days at a local hotel along with hundreds of other people during a forest fire two years ago. We were fed and housed on the gov’s dime, so I cant imagine what the final bill was but they spent at LEAST $2000 on us alone. Id estimate there were 500 of us in that hotel alone so that’s a million dollars. And that was only one of several hotels. Add on the cost of firefighting and the loss of property and it gets VERY costly in a hurry. To say nothing about how traumatizing it was for my three neighbors who lost their houses and livestock to the fire.
I don’t disagree, I asked my rhetorical question because this “forest management” argument is often being made in bad faith by right wing climate deniers who also scoff at government spending.
We can extrapolate your logic to climate action at large. Stop meat and dairy related subsidies, stop fossil infrastructure, invest in alternative and sustainable systems even if there’s an apparent short term cost.
It’ll be cheaper than what’s coming…